SOURCES and NOTES - Narration - Pt.4, So What? Back in America

Back in America ...
Footage from the September 1, 2008 march on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN

Old Iran hand ...
is Robert Tait, "who spent nearly three years in Iran as a correspondent for the Guardian until he was forced to leave last December when the government refused to renew his visa."
SOURCE: www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/iran-fury.html

"The regime feeds off American hostility. Every time there's another threat from Washington, that gives them more oxygen. ... They won't be able to use this threat indefinitely. There's a widespread feeling in Iran that the way things are isn't the way they should be. People believe that too much isolation has not been good for them. But as long as there seems to be a clear and present danger, the government has what it sees as a justification to do whatever it wants."
SOURCE: www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/iran-fury.html

Comments on the Iran-Iraq War

SOURCE: Wikipedia:
"Not all saw the war in negative terms. The Islamic Revolution of Iran was strengthened and radicalized. [Nasr, Vali, The Shia Revival, Norton, (2006), p.140]
The Iranian government-owned Etelaat newspaper wrote:

"There is not a single school or town that is excluded from the happiness of waging war, from drinking the exquisite elixir of death or from the sweet death of the martyr, who dies in order to live forever in paradise." [Column in Etelaat, [[April 4]], [[1983]], quoted in Molavi, Afshin, Soul of Iran, Norton, (2006)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War

COMMENT: Can it be that when the hardliners of the Islamic Republic consider the possibility of an American attack they remember ...

the Hostage Crisis at the Den of Spies - that established decades of American enmity towards Iran but whose popularity at home was so strong it led to the downfall of Bazargan's moderate Provisional Government and the passage of the theocratic constitution? and ...

the Iran-Iraq War - the last time another country invaded Iran? how the swelling of patriotism solidified the Islamic Revolution?

SOURCES and NOTES - Narration - Pt.4, So What? Thoughts

And surely you wouldn’t want anything to happen to her!!

COMMENT: This Iranian university student we met in Tehran was not only a charmer, but not-at-all pro-regime. The most pro-reform and pro-democracy demographic in Iran is women, young, and educated. North Tehran is also ground zero anti-regime territory. This was filmed in far north Tehran.

Issue of the Hostage Crisis

So what can you say to the neocon who argues that
If the issue is the injustice of the 1953 coup and Shah’s dictatorship,
then the solution to bad relations is justice. But if the issue is spite, hatred, domination … then fair play can’t really help better relations with Iran.
How can anything - except maybe force?

COMMENT: According to Middle East Expert William R.Polk: “One is the hostage issue at the American embassy [in Tehran] which has left a very deep and still raw scar on American public opinion. Throughout America people still mention that.”

SOURCE: Middle East Expert William R.Polk on United States foreign policy toward Iran interviewed by Ali Fathollah-Nejad at http://www.juancole.com/]